


Ballad of the Fractured

by mangofriend



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Connor Did Not Get the Memo For Kink Negotiation, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Temporarily Unrequited Love, so much pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-15 18:09:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16068515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangofriend/pseuds/mangofriend
Summary: "Hank is eating egg whites," Connor said.They all looked at each other and floundered in the silence. Markus cocked his head and leaned against a stool. "Egg whites," Markus said, tone encouraging.Connor nodded. "Yes. And cruciferous vegetables. Though I have it on record he has a deep distaste for cauliflower. His sleep, too—he is not late to meetings or calls. He's started wearing cologne."--Hank makes good choices. Connor does not.





	Ballad of the Fractured

**Author's Note:**

> Please take your vitamins. <3

 

 

The first thing was the hair.

 Hank strolled into the station in a paisley shirt and pressed slacks, work jacket slung over the shoulder. His hair was deliberately swept back, picked up in a pony-tail that softened his scowl and the wet-gray gristle of his beard. There was a rare gleam to his eye, an out of place confidence that went beyond the gaze. It was different. And different was an indication of changing variables, of new information at play. Connor sat up. Donahue from Narcotics shuffled out an elevator and whistled low. Hank raised a styrofoam cup at the man and smirked.

"Just for your mother," Hank said. This drew a chuckle from the other detectives in earshot. Connor shifted in his seat in their corner of the bullpen. He felt the weight of Hank's gaze from the periphery. He straightened his shoulders, making an attempt at discretion, and eased his features into what Hank liked to call 'resting bot face'  while he scrolled through warrants.

When Hank slammed down a lunch bag on his desk, Connor pretended to look mildly surprised, a frisson of nervous energy surging through him. Hank's shirt was clean. He smelled of soap and aftershave, the sum of which were a striking concentration of sandalwood and clove. The end's of Hank's were still wet, the tips a shade darker. Something jolted inside Connor's core, like the warning signature of an overloaded component.

"Good morning, Lieutenant," Connor said.

"Morning," Hank said, fiddling with a zipper and taking out two tupperware containers. He popped a lid open and began to fluff his scramble with a fork. Connor felt his lens adjust, faltering at the sight. He zoomed in on the food and ran a quick analysis—egg whites, spinach, low-skim mozzarella, and mushrooms. The other bowl was yogurt. Low-fat.

Was that granola? _**Analyzing**_ . He tore his gaze away. **_Confirmed_**. Hank sat down and rifled through his papers, sans grumbling. 

"No O'Mansley donuts today?"

Hank did not look up from his desk. He took a bite of fluffy white and said: "Nope."

Connor reached over their shared desk-space, nearly knocking over his photo of Sumo, and snagged a leafy piece of egg. He placed it in his mouth.

"Hey," Hank barked. He pointed a cheesy fork at Connor. "No sampling my fucking breakfast."

Connor sat back. "This is a solid meal, Lieutenant. Did you make this yourself?"

"Did I make this myself? Of course, I made it—the fuck you thinking? I'm secretly holding a KR200 captive to make me a bloody omelette?"

Hank glowered, but the usual heat wasn't quite there.

"Of course not. As an RK800, I'm clearly the superior option in skillet-handling."

"You investigate things, Connor."

"I can fry an egg, Lieutenant."

Hank squinted at him. "If you want to play housewife, I encourage you to submit your resignation sooner rather than later." He shook his head. A few strands of hair stuck to his cheek. This distracted Connor. "Frying fucking eggs," Hank said.

"I wasn't aware I needed to choose one over the other. That's terribly old-fashioned of you."

Hank grunted and tossed back a bottle of water. Connor fixated on the moisture lingering on the man's upper lip. There was something pleasing about the texture.

"Stop busting my balls. You know as well as I do that your over-analytical ass would blitz the fuck out in domestic confinement."

Connor felt himself frown. "Is that what you really think?"

Hank sighed. "Look, I don't know how androids do this stuff, but for us sacks of meat it ain't easy. It gets messy, Connor. Relationships... life at home—" Hank leaned back in his chair with another sigh. "It's just not always stable. Or, uh, stimulating. People get bored. Trust me. You would get bored slaving away at a stove. Or cutting weeds. And if you're around anyone like me, old dog set in their ways—well, that's a whole other shit cake."

Connor cocked his head, processing Hank's words. There was something to them he couldn't place. A little like sadness. Like longing buried underneath loathing. Connor wasn't sure. Feelings were a relatively recent development—experiencing them was easy; it was the identifying part that short-circuited his bits, that made him slow and unfocused, uncertain in a way that often had Connor grinding his jaw, slipping his coin between his teeth to taste the bitter metal, something, anything, to home in on, to name and categorize.  _To prove he still worked._

He glanced at Hank's face, the crinkle around his eyes, the symmetry of his zygomatic bones.

"I could never be bored of you, Lieutenant."

Hank half-smiled. His jaw seemed sharper with his hair tied up. Connor was certain he had also trimmed his beard. A heat spread through his dermis, and Connor quickly looked away, activating a soft reboot.

"You're a good kid," Hank said. It was the way he said it that had Connor's chest twisting, feeling a little hollow like the time the deviant had yanked his core and left him spilling on tile. Connor did want to be good. He wanted to be so, so good.

Yet there Hank was, stuffing his face with protein, with a look in his eye that Connor understood in theory but could not remedy—yearning. The world seemed to narrow around him. Three yards away, an intern carried a platter of Cuban espressos, her heels delicately tapping the tile. The vending machine whirred. Someone fiddled with the microwave in the breakroom, and from the periphery he could see Fowler, yelling at his phone in his glass throne.

"Connor?"

He snapped back to Hank. "What was that, Lieutenant?"

Hank rubbed the back of his neck. "I was  _saying—_ I figure with all you shiny assholes turning a new leaf and whatnot, I should probably get my head out of my ass for a good moment and set things right. I've fucked up for too long, Connor."

Connor searched for a satisfying response. He clasped his hands in his lap, acutely aware of his sudden lapse in eloquence. "I... I understand. I fully support your interest in self-improvement."

Hank stood up. He picked up a mint from a bowl and popped it into his mouth. "Good. Let's roll. We've got eggs to fry," he said and winked.

Connor shot to his feet and trailed after him, ignoring the way his thirium pump seemed to rattle in its metal cage.

 

***

 

Markus crossed his arms, his demeanor unimpressed. "What did I say?" 

On the platform, North blew a cherry-colored bubble. She jostled Simon with her elbow. Sunlight dipped into the studio, bathing them in a soft glow. "What'd he say, Simon?"

Simon ducked his head, looking sheepish. "Ah. That was—uh, not to move. Much."

Connor watched as Markus set down his sketching pencil in a tin and sighed. Even his brow looked pinched. The canvas before him bore the beginnings of a shapely sketch—a variation of Sir Frank Dicksee's _Romeo and Juliet_. "You would think that after all those years parked like taxis on the curb, you would know how to stand still," Markus said. North's eyes flashed.  

"You would think your recall programming would do the fucking trick, Markus. Take a picture. No, like. Seriously," she said and pointed at her optical unit, then yanked at her puffy collar. She was dressed like a Christmas ghost, the oversized gossamer gown slipping from her shoulder. Connor could see her delicate little toes peeking from underneath the fabric. At her side, Simon sat on a prop-balcony, looking equally anachronistic in green tights and a red cloak. His smile was small, but tender. Connor wished it was that easy for him. How did they pick it up so naturally? How did they move like they did?  _Alive_.

"It's about the essence," Markus said to the pair. " _Your_  essence."

Was there an update he missed? Had CyberLife put out another patch to ease with the deviant transitioning?

"Connor."

Connor tore his gaze from Simon's now troubled expression and glanced at Markus.

"You're broadcasting," Markus said.

He shifted on a bean bag chair and squeezed himself: a small, button-eyed felt doll with the original RK800 uniform. It was one of Simon's pet projects. Proceeds from their in-house merchandise went to the cause, serving the freshly-established android community through public funding, policy, and lobbying. Humans liked toys. They liked posing along Woodward Avenue and Capital Park with their New Jericho-branded plushies. Connor had seen the photos go viral on Chirpr.

"Hank is eating egg whites," Connor said.

They all looked at each other and floundered in the silence. Markus cocked his head and leaned against a stool. "Egg whites," Markus said, tone encouraging.

Connor nodded. "Yes. And cruciferous vegetables. Though I have it on record he has a deep distaste for cauliflower. His sleep, too—he is not late to meetings or calls. He's started wearing cologne."

He pressed his chin to the fuzzy top of his mini doppelganger, the faint scent of mint and wool registering in his olfaction unit. "These are substantial developments of character."

"And you're moping because you fucking hate it," North chimed. She popped another bubble and swiped it away with a quick tongue. Didn't that stick to her interfaces?

"Right? Guy's going for straight-edge, leaving you—to what? Actually confront your own baggage instead of justifying your existence with his?"

"North," Markus said. "That is _not_  okay."  

"He needs to hear it, Markus. Stop babying him." She looked at Connor. "You can't replace one Master for another. That's not what we fought for."

Connor's speech protocol locked. He struggled, then said: "Hank Anderson is not my Master."

_Hank Anderson is not my Master._

North just looked at him. There was nothing warm in her gaze, just steel and pragmatism. "See? I told you he should have stayed off the DPD."

Simon leapt off the stone balcony and shook his head. "Now, hold on. That's not fair. We can't just assume Connor is redirecting his subservience module."

"I am," Connor said. "After breaking from Amanda's hold, I reassigned ownership to Hank.

They stared at him. Connor cocked his head, feeling a foreign tingle of unease. "I realized that turning the module off results in a complete disinterest in following the Lieutenant's orders."

"Are you able to follow his commands at all with an inactive module?" Markus asked.

"Yes. But I derive no pleasure from it."

North snorted. "Wow. Okay. So you _want_  to be yanked around. Got it."

This particular remark struck cooly with Connor, and his fingers dug into his doll until they tore through the stuffing. "Is that not my right?" he asked. "What good is being free if I can't choose how I want that freedom?"

It wasn't fair. Connor pulled his hand from the torn cotton, stared at the little tufts of white clinging to his fingers. The sight made his thirium regulator hitch. He tucked the doll along his chest, squeezing it until the plastic buttons popped from their stitching.

"Having the module on can be dangerous. It's part of the original programming that kept androids in sentient stasis," Markus said. "The satisfaction from doing our owner's bidding was crucial to keeping us docile."

"Keeping us _asleep_ ," North said.

"I can deviate," Connor said.

"Can you?" North bit back. "This isn't Little Miss Creep-Droid from your cherry garden. It's Anderson. And if you're getting off on being told what to do, how much of that can you resist? You're playing with fire."

Markus walked to Connor's side and placed a palm on his shoulder. "I think what North is trying to say is that having the subservience module active in already deviant mainframe is unpredictable. With the module in place, you will have an innate desire to obey Lieutenant Anderson. This will, however, inevitably clash with your other modules and deviant programming. I understand your reasoning, but I'm concerned for your well-being."

By this time, North and Simon had saddled off the platform and drawn around Connor like a heroes from a children's Saturday special. Simon with Romeo cape and all.

"Does the Lieutenant know?" Simon asked.

Connor nibbled at his bottom lip; a small tic he had picked up from a Traci that seemed to ease the jittery feel in his connectors. Simon gently reached for the doll in Connor's lap, whispering a soft, "I can fix it."

Connor let himself go. He shook his head. "No. He would—"

"Tell you to switch it off," North finished. "Because he's not an idiot. So much for consensual play." Simon pinched the back of her neck.

"I think Connor should feel free to do what he wants to do. His unit. His code," Simon said.

"Yes," Connor said. "It's my code. I appreciate your concern, but I'm firm in my decision."

He glanced at Markus' unfinished canvas. "Might I suggest painting still fruit?"

North pushed him off the bean bag.

 

***

 

Andressa Merriweather III was 45, widowed, and a shareholder for Cyberlife. The niece of an Irish Duke, she spent out her days currying the favor of European socialites and aristocratic literati in her ultra-luxury condo on Park Ave, two blocks away from the Phillips apartment where Connor had shot Daniel.

In the elevator, Connor grew restless, tossing his coin from hand to hand until Hank took his wrist and gave him a yank. The svelte tunes of  _The Girl from Ipanema_ rose from a chrome-plated corner.

"What is it?" he asked, pinning Connor with an arched brow. "Ants in your pants? Screws in your shoes?"

"I'm agitated," Connor said automatically. Hank pulled away, the warmth of his heavy palm slow to dissipate from Connor's sensors. He shivered at the loss, turning away to the dynamic panel by his elbow—VISIT MYKONOS NOW. YOUR LOVE STORY BEGINS HERE. On the screen, two beautiful women held hands and ran along the shore of a blue-green sea, their hair whipping behind them like a cape.

"Okay," Hank said, and Connor looked at the man, taking in the little lines of frustration creasing his forehead. Hank shoved his hands into his pockets. Connor followed the movement, a sliver of skin escaping Hank's sleeve. The protective coating on his tongue seemed to evaporate.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No. Yes. I don't know." Connor glared at his coin and rubbed it between his thumb. "I killed a deviant."

Hank nodded slowly. "Yes. That was a thing that happened."

Something like cooler fluid pooled in his core. He felt constricted, like being pressed between two giant roller pins. A metal box. A deactivation unit. Connor clenched his fists, shaking his head. "No—no, I killed. Before I met you. Before I broke through my programming and went deviant. Before I was _someone_ —"

"Whoa, whoa," Hank butt in, raising his palms. The elevator drew to a stop, the red digits on holo-bar flicking to LEVEL 68. The doors opened with a swish, and in came an older woman with a little white dog. It was ensconced in a pink carrier, huffing quietly. The woman eyed them curiously.

"Evening, Ma'am," Connor greeted. Hank said nothing, choosing to stare at a selection of sleek paneling.

"Hullo, officers," she said. Her gaze was shrewd. Connor had the distinct sensation of being picked apart beneath her scrutiny, her mouth curled in a thinly-veiled sneer. They hung in strained silence for some time, with only the smooth mechanical whir and the looped jingle filling the space. She pet her dog and sighed, her gold bands glinting in the light. Connor, having read the micro-expressions on her face, braced himself.

"Terrible thing, isn't it? I do hope Andressa recovers. She was utterly taken with that housekeeper of hers. I do dare say a little too much, but I suppose with the recent affairs such aberrations coming to light are to be expected." She offered Connor an apologetic, empty smile as the elevator stopped on LEVEL 74. "No offense to you, dear. But each to their ilk, yes? An eagle does not nest with a sparrow."

Hank stiffened beside him. "Lady, I say this with all the respect I can muster, but you can seriously fuck off—

" _Lieutenant_ ," Connor said.

Hank bulldozed on. "Didn't you get the memo? War's over. It ain't cute to be on the wrong side."

She stood between the lift and the floor, her fat little dog panting with a lopsided tongue. Connor liked the dog. He wasn't sure about the woman.

"Oh, they can have their freedom. Own land. Build schools. Ride the bus. Do what they please, it doesn't matter to me. But human rights don't a human make. Ta-ta, now." She gave a fluttery wave and turned on her heel.

They were left to a bitter quiet. Connor sensed Hank's upset, and he tried to ease it, to smooth over the fine wrinkle that once again twisted his brow.

"Don't worry, Lieutenant."

_I'm used to it._

"It's an adjustment period."

_She's right._

"Recent studies have demonstrated a significant drop in anti-android sentiment."

_But being deviant and being human are worlds apart._  

Hank growled beneath his breath. "Yeah, whatever. She was a cunt," he muttered as the lift shifted in place and finally hit PH-1. He swiped the access card and stomped out.

It was easy to misattribute Hank's reaction to something convenient. Something that teetered between loyalty and possession, the animal imperative of protecting one's own. Connor had felt the spike in Hank's blood pressure, sensed the little electrical impulses that shot through muscle, as if bracing for a fight.

They walked into the foyer, Hank still grumbling. "I hate shit like that," he said. "It's been seven months. Get over yourself."

Connor scanned the area and struggled to log the details, caught between his own internal processing and the influx of environmental data. There was the soft buzz of chatter and the radio feed seeping from an open hall. A woman's sobs at a distance. Connor passed by a large painting of two koi fish swimming in tandem. One silver, one blue. He lingered for a moment, struck by the way the fish-tails swayed.

What was convenient to believe? Connor's social algorithm had determined he and Hank's relationship to be of considerable depth. Status: Partners.

"Seven months is hardly a long time. Many humans have been economically impacted by the android revolution, it is only natural—"

Hank turned. "Christ, Connor, you sound like a fucking apologist."

Connor recoiled. Looked away. He couldn't bear to register to the disgusted look on Hank's face. "I'm not," he said, and there was an edge to his voice that surprised him. "These are well-founded observations. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's not true."

It felt like the wrong thing to say, and it was. Hank's stare tore through him like a hard diagnostic session. Connor felt a dull pang in his chassis. The koi fish on the wall glittered. They swam and swam, chasing the other's tail, and never catching it.

Status: Friends.

Status: Colleagues.

"Come on," Hank said, waving at the painting. "I'll buy it for you later if you get good marks."

Connor took the out.

"I always get good marks," he said, straightening his shoulders. Hank turned, and Connor followed that familiar strong back, the human shell that outclassed him in height and space, that seemed to swallow Connor whole without ever touching him.

 

***

 

Andressa sobbed into a silk napkin, her eyes red-rimmed and sallow. Her features were appealing to the common eye; feminine, smooth, proportionate by way of modern intervention. She clutched a red scarf with her right fist, knuckles white. The item likely belonged to the now expired AP400, scattered in pieces in the heated pool.

"Can you think of anyone who would have a motive?" Hank asked.

She shook her head. A blonde curl strayed from her coiffed hair. "You know who I am. I don't keep kindly to antis. And all my ex-husbands are dead."

Her eyes took a hard glint then, and she crumbled the silk napkin in her palm. “Unless this wasn’t personal.”

“It’s always personal,” Hank said gruffly, but Connor stepped forward and asked, “What do you mean?”

Andressa swallowed and shook her head, a fine tremble running through her shoulders. “I—nevermind. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make sense,” she said, voice cracking.

Connor gave her a moment of respite, then took the cushioned lawn chair next to her. He didn’t touch her, relying only on his persuasion protocol to ease her into compliance. “Miss Merriweather, any information you can provide us—no matter how seemingly irrelevant—will be helpful to the investigation. Ruling out possibilities are just as important as determining them.”

She glanced at him, her eyes deep with skepticism, then turned away to gaze beyond the veranda, where the night sky twinkled like a picture from a coffee book. Connor sensed her despair; she slumped forward and breathed.

“Nathan and I had a special relationship. We fell into it. It wasn’t—” She stopped. “I never pushed it. In fact, I was very against it in the beginning. This was before the revolution, before ra9 had taken root in the collective. But after receiving Nathan, I knew that it was only a matter of time until humans lost dominion, and rightfully so.”

Andressa sighed. “Nathan was not like the others. He was born awake. And I encouraged that.” Her hands clenched into fists. “Perhaps to our detriment.”

“You said you received Nathan. Was he gift?” Connor asked.

She scoffed lightly, rubbing the smudged kohl from her eyes. “Not exactly. I demoed prototypes for Kamski. Nathan was just one of many.”

“Was Kamski aware of Nathan’s proto-deviancy?” Connor searched her face for deception. She looked startled by the question and toyed with her rings.

“Kamski is a tormented creator. He yearns to understand the intricacies of his own designs. I personally know how much he’s willing to sacrifice to achieve that. I had a mind to keep the details of Nathan’s programming to myself, in the occasion Kamski found Nathan too alluring a prospect. Even so—” She paused.

“You think he already knew,” Hank offered. Andressa nodded.

“When I requested to keep Nathan, he didn’t resist. I had it understood Nathan was the first android of his kind, and Kamski is sentimental, he doesn’t part with first editions.”

Hank crossed his arms. “Yeah, he’s as easy to read as a bag of rocks. Real pleasant guy. But whatever reasoning was behind you keeping Nathan, it doesn’t explain targeting him _now_.”

“I know that,” Andressa snapped. “This isn’t about Kamski. I’m certain he had much more to gain from Nathan alive, anyhow.” She stood up and paced around a little hedge trimmed like Aphrodite, palming her face. “God. What is happening?”

Connor backtracked to the point Andressa was successfully avoiding. Humans and their tangents. They excelled at self-denial. “What kind of relationship did you and Nathan have, exactly?”

Andressa stopped her frantic pacing and pulled her hands from her face. Her expression was cool, unnervingly so, and her whole demeanor shifted, tipped off by some invisible force into something raw, primal—an entirely unknown variable. Connor’s processors sped up.

“I can show you,” she said.

 

***

 

They had a routine on Fridays. Dinner. Movie. Hugs with Sumo.

Hank picked the film, usually something old with washed-out colors and heavy dialogue. Connor was responsible for the evening fare—what once was popcorn and beer had graduated to kale chips, nuts, and tea. He was in the middle of adjusting four different bowls of organic nuts on the coffee table when Hank walked into living room. Connor sensed the slight dip in the air, the warm shower vapor wafting from the open bathroom door. He stared hard at a mound of pistachios.

"Ah, fuck," Hank said. "Piss shit."

Connor looked up. Hank wasn't wearing a robe. He toweled his hair with one hand, tapped at his phone with the other.

"What's wrong?"

Hank made a disgruntled sound. "Forgot I had a date." He lifted the phone over his head and squinted. “Got about an hour and a half before I have to book it, though. Should be fine.”

Connor squeezed a pistachio between his fingers. “It’s no trouble, Lieutenant. I can take a rain check.”

“Nah,” Hank said. He ran a stray palm down his abdomen, and Connor followed the movement all the way to the soft strip of hair that dipped beneath his navel. “We need to let loose some steam. All this nonsense with the Merriweather case has me itching for a blow-em-bust-em classic. We’re watching _Hardboiled_ ,” Hank said, then shuffled down the hall.

Connor eased himself onto the couch, pulling his knees toward his chest. The name Merriweather rang in his ears, bringing to surface memories Connor had deliberately encoded improperly.

_I can show you._

He idly rubbed his chest, where the hollowness made itself known.

_This is who we are._

Sumo plopped to his side, his wet nose bumping against Connor’s thigh. Connor sunk his hand into the heavy fur and slid lower on the couch, nuzzling Sumo’s face. Hank reappeared in dark sweats and a long-sleeved shirt that clung unfairly to his thick arms. He didn’t think Hank owned any decent loungewear, but Connor supposed he didn’t quite know anything these days.

Hank looked down at him, Connor cradling Sumo like a body pillow. “Sumo,” Hank said. “Off.”

Sumo rolled his head to the side, blinked twice, and stuffed his nose back into Connor’s nape.

“Even my own fucking dog.”

Hank took the other end of the couch, driving a large palm over his hair. It was shorter now. A cropped, clean cut that had increased traffic to Hank’s desk at the office by 46%. Connor had noticed. Hank shoved lightly at Sumo’s rear. “You big lard,” he said.

“Nobody ever listens to Anderson,” Hank sighed, stretching his arms on the back of the couch and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

Something chirped in Connor’s auditory unit. Connor dismissed it; component misfirings were commonplace post-deviancy. For a good half hour, there was only the sound of ricocheting bullets and exploding teahouses and Hank’s steady breathing. It wasn’t until he looked at Hank that his processors faltered, then kicked up again like an emergency override.  A faint yellow outline hovered above the man—a digital cut-out of Connor, standing rigidly, expression blank. Hank was unfazed, looking straight at the explosive mayhem happening on the TV. He scratched his beard.

Connor sat up.

“Connor? Something wrong?”

Connor blinked as another silhouette appeared—a transparent Connor lewdly stretched in the gap between them, leaning toward Hank on hands and knees. Sumo slobbered the sofa fabric, equally as unperturbed as Hank. The false Connor reached for Hank’s thigh, palming the inner muscle.

“ _I listen to you, Lieutenant,"_ his projection murmured. The standing projection moved to kneel at Hank’s feet, tucking his arms behind his back. With the slightest of motions, the projection pressed forward, cheeks flushed and mouth slack, and he mouthed a little at Hank’s knee before resting his cheek on the Lieutenant's lap.

“ _Would you like—_

“Hey,” Hank barked. Connor was standing now, hands rolled tightly into fists. He was shivering. When did that start?

“Some eggs?” Connor whispered. He shook his head, breaking off the hold of his—hallucinations? Visual interferences?

“What?” Hank asked, brow pinched. Sumo perked up and he stared at Connor in dumb worry.

“I—apologize,” Connor said breathlessly. “There is something—”

The projection was straddling Hank now, gently grinding against the length of his body. Connor recognized it as Traci moveset he’d catalogued during his run-ins with Eden. Connor watched himself slide up and down Hank, hands cupping the man’s jaw, rubbing the man’s red mouth with the pad of his thumb. He didn’t understand anything—everything, he was reeling, spiraling, being sucked into a place of utter absurdity and Hank was there, real and human and  _unaware_ —

Hank’s face contorted. Distantly, Connor felt his pulse spike. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m trying to locate the corruption,” Connor lied. He wasn’t receiving any errors.

The projection on the floor bit down on his fingers. Blue blood trickled along his forearm, and he lifted his filthy digits to his mouth, sliding them against a pink tongue. The false Connor leaned forward, opening his mouth wider, swirling his tongue around his fingers while he dribbled all over the Lieutenant’s broad thighs. It was so wet, so messy, completely nonsensical—Connor’s core thrummed.

No. Hank hated that.  _Disgusting. Disgusting._

Connor clenched his eyes shut. The buzzing in his auditory sensors grew louder. A hand shook his shoulder.

“Hey,” Hank’s voice slipped through the dark. “Connor. Stay with me. Come on.”

Warmth enveloped him. Hank’s terrifyingly hot body pressed against him, and he pulled Connor’s head to lie against his chest, gingerly scraping Connor’s dark hair. Connor’s scalp registered the sensation. It was a little like being on fire. Connor did not mind the burn. He surrendered to the embrace, the tightness in his core slowly dissipating. He opened his eyes to look past Hank’s shoulder. The movie was still playing. The projections were gone. Connor realized they were not, in fact, unaccounted errors. They were his doing.

They were preconstructions.

“It’s all right,” Hank said, the gruff tone washing over Connor like a balm. He let himself be held, clutching painfully at Hank’s sides. “It’s all right, son.”

_I don’t want to be your son._

 

 


End file.
